The 67-year-old man who leaped to his death inside Denver’s Lindsey-Flanigan Courthouse last week was on trial for attempted murder.
Thomas Stilson jumped from an upper floor of the courthouse just after 8 a.m. on Aug. 1. He injured two other people in the fall; they suffered only minor injuries. The Denver Office of Medical Examiner announced Thursday that it had ruled his death a suicide.
Stilson was the defendant in an ongoing jury trial in which he faced several felony charges — including attempted first-degree murder, assault with a deadly weapon, menacing and various sentence enhancers that could have led to decades in prison had he been convicted, according to a criminal history report from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation.
Stilson was charged in November. Further details of the allegations against him were not available Thursday because the court case was sealed — made secret — and blocked from public view.
“Please be advised that there is no public record that exists,” the clerk’s office wrote in response to an inquiry by The Denver Post.
“No such record exists,” Denver police said in an email.
Other still-public court records show Stilson pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct in Larimer County in 2012 — a low-level misdemeanor offense — and otherwise did not have a criminal history in Colorado beyond minor traffic offenses.
His attorney could not be immediately reached Thursday.
Stilson’s death is at least the second time a defendant in an ongoing jury trial has died by suicide in Denver in recent years. In 2021, a former Lakewood police officer, Randall Butler, 39, killed himself while on trial over allegations he sexually assaulted a woman in the back of his patrol car.
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